HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION
The next morning Brillon brought a note from Ian Belward, which said that
he was starting, and asked Gaston to be sure and come to Paris. The note
was carelessly friendly. After reading it, he lay thinking. Presently
he chanced to see Jacques look intently at him.
"Well, Brillon, what is it?" he asked genially. Jacques had come on
better than Gaston had hoped for, but the light play of his nature was
gone--he was grave, almost melancholy; and, in his way, as notable as his
master. Their life in London had changed him much. A valet in St.
James's Street was not a hunting comrade on the Coppermine River. Often
when Jacques was left alone he stood at the window looking out on the gay
traffic, scarcely stirring; his eyes slow, brooding. Occasionally,
standing so, he would make the sacred gesture. One who heard him swear
now and then, in a calm, deliberate way,--at the cook and the porter,--
would have thought the matters in strange contrast. But his religion
was a central habit, followed as mechanically as his appetite or the
folding of his master's clothes. Besides, like most woodsmen, he was
superstitious. Gaston was kind with him, keeping, however, a firm hand
till his manner had become informed by the new duties. Jacques's
greatest pleasure was his early morning visits to the stables. Here were
Saracen and Jim the broncho-sleek, savage, playful. But he touched the
highest point of his London experience when they rode in the Park.
In this Gaston remained singular. He rode always with Jacques. Perhaps
he wished to preserve one possible relic of the old life, perhaps he
liked this touch of drama; or both. It created notice, criticism, but he
was superior to that. Time and again people asked him to ride, but he
always pleaded another engagement. He would then be seen with Jacques
plus Jacques's earrings and the wonderful hair, riding grandly in the
Row. Jacques's eyes sparkled and a snatch of song came to his lips at
these times.
No figures in the Park were so striking. There was nothing bizarre, but
Gaston had a distinguished look, and women who had felt his hand at their
waists in the dance the night before, now knew him, somehow, at a grave
distance. Though Gaston did not say it to himself, these were the hours
when he really was with the old life--lived it again--prairie, savannah,
ice-plain, alkali desert. When, dismounting, the horses were taken and
they went up the stairs, Gaston would softly lay his whip across
Jacques's shoulders without speaking. This was their only ritual of
camaraderie, and neglect of it would have fretted the half-breed. Never
had man such a servant. No matter at what hour Gaston returned, he found
Jacques waiting; and when he woke he found him ready, as now, on this
morning, after a strange night.
"What is it, Jacques?" he repeated.
The old name! Jacques shivered a little with pleasure. Presently he
broke out with:
"Monsieur, when do we go back?"
"Go back where?"
"To the North, monsieur."
"What's in your noddle now, Brillon?"
The impatient return to "Brillon" cut Jacques like a whip.
"Monsieur," he suddenly said, his face glowing, his hands opening
nervously, "we have eat, we have drunk, we have had the dance and the
great music here: is it enough? Sometimes as you sleep you call out, and
you toss to the strokes of the tower-clock. When we lie on the Plains of
Yath from sunset to sunrise, you never stir then. You remember when we
sleep on the ledge of the Voshti mountain--so narrow that we were tied
together? Well, we were as babes in blankets. In the Prairie of the Ten
Stars your fingers were on the trigger firm as a bolt; here I have watch
them shake with the coffee-cup. Monsieur, you have seen: is it enough?
You have lived here: is it like the old lodge and the long trail?"
Gaston sat up in bed, looked in the mirror opposite, ran his fingers
through his hair, regarded his hands, turning them over, and then, with
sharp impatience, said:
"Go to hell!"
The little man's face flushed to his hair; he sucked in the air with a
gasp. Without a word, he went to the dressing-table, poured out the
shaving-water, threw a towel over his arm, and turned to come to the bed;
but, all at once, he sidled back, put down the water, and furtively drew
a sleeve across his eyes.
Gaston saw, and something suddenly burned in him. He dropped his eyes,
slid out of bed, into his dressing-gown, and sat down.
Jacques made ready. He was not prepared to have Gaston catch him by the
shoulders with a nervous grip, search his eyes, and say:
"You damned little fool, I'm not worth it!" Jacques's face shone.
"Every great man has his fool--alors!" was the happy reply.
"Jacques," Gaston presently said, "what's on your mind?"
"I saw--last night, monsieur," he said.
"You saw what?"
"I saw you in the court-yard with the lady." Gaston was now very grave.
"Did you recognise her?"
"No: she moved all as a spirit."
"Jacques, that matter is between you and me. I'm going to tell you,
though, two things; and--where's your string of beads?"
Jacques drew out his rosary.
"That's all right. Mum as Manitou! She was asleep; she is my sister.
And that is all, till there's need for you to know more."
In this new confidence Jacques was content. The life was a gilded mess,
but he could endure it now. Three days passed. During that time Gaston
was up to town twice; lunched at Lady Dargan's, and dined at Lord
Dunfolly's. For his grandfather, who was indisposed, he was induced to
preside at a political meeting in the interest of a wealthy local brewer,
who confidently expected the seat, and, through gifts to the party,
a knighthood. Before the meeting, in the gush of--as he put it "kindred
aims," he laid a finger familiarly in Gaston's button-hole. Jacques, who
was present, smiled, for he knew every change in his master's face, and
he saw a glitter in his eye. He remembered when they two were in trouble
with a gang of river-drivers, and one did this same thing rudely: how
Gaston looked down, and said, with a devilish softness: "Take it away."
And immediately after the man did so.
Mr. Sylvester Gregory Babbs, in a similar position, heard a voice say
down at him, with a curious obliqueness:
"If you please!"
The keenest edge of it was lost on the flaring brewer, but his fingers
dropped, and he twisted his heavy watchchain uneasily. The meeting
began. Gaston in a few formal words, unconventional in idea, introduced
Mr. Babbs as "a gentleman whose name was a household word in the county,
who would carry into Parliament the civic responsibility shown in his
private life, who would render his party a support likely to fulfil its
purpose."
When he sat down, Captain Maudsley said: "That's a trifle vague,
Belward."
"How can one treat him with importance?"
"He's the sort that makes a noise one way or another."
"Yes. Obituary: 'At his residence in Babbslow Square, yesterday, Sir S.
G. Babbs, M. P., member of the London County Council. Sir S. G. Babbs,
it will be remembered, gave L100,000 to build a home for the propagation
of Vice, and--'"
"That's droll!"
"Why not Vice? 'Twould be just the same in his mind. He doesn't give
from a sense of moral duty. Not he; he's a bungowawen!"
"What is that?"
"That's Indian. You buy a lot of Indian or halfbreed loafers with
beaver-skins and rum, go to the Mount of the Burning Arrows, and these
fellows dance round you and call you one of the lost race, the Mighty Men
of the Kimash Hills. And they'll do that while the rum lasts. Meanwhile
you get to think yourself a devil of a swell--you and the gods! . . .
And now we had better listen to this bungowawen, hadn't we?"
The room was full, and on the platform were gentlemen come to support
Sir William Belward. They were interested to see how Gaston would
carry it off.
Mr. Babbs's speech was like a thousand others by the same kind of man.
More speeches--some opposing--followed, and at last came the chairman to
close the meeting. He addressed himself chiefly to a bunch of farmers,
artisans, and labouring-men near. After some good-natured raillery at
political meetings in general, the bigotry of party, the difficulty in
getting the wheat from the chaff, and some incisive thrusts at those who
promised the moon and gave a green cheese, who spent their time in
berating their opponents, he said:
"There's a game that sailors play on board ship--men-o'-war and sailing-
ships mostly. I never could quite understand it, nor could any officers
ever tell me--the fo'castle for the men and the quarter-deck for the
officers, and what's English to one is Greek to the other. Well, this
was all I could see in the game. They sat about, sometimes talking,
sometimes not. All at once a chap would rise and say, 'Allow me to
speak, me noble lord,' and follow this by hitting some one of the party
wherever the blow got in easiest--on the head, anywhere! [Laughter.]
Then he would sit down seriously, and someone else spoke to his noble
lordship. Nobody got angry at the knocks, and Heaven only knows what it
was all about. That is much the way with politics, when it is played
fair. But here is what I want particularly to say: We are not all born
the same, nor can we live the same. One man is born a brute, and another
a good sort; one a liar, and one an honest man; one has brains, and the
other hasn't. Now, I've lived where, as they say, one man is as good as
another. But he isn't, there or here. A weak man can't run with a
strong. We have heard to-night a lot of talk for something and against
something. It is over. Are you sure you have got what was meant clear
in your mind? [Laughter, and 'Blowed if we'ave!'] Very well; do not
worry about that. We have been playing a game of 'Allow me to speak, me
noble lord!' And who is going to help you to get the most out of your
country and your life isn't easy to know. But we can get hold of a few
clear ideas, and measure things against them. I know and have talked
with a good many of you here ['That's so! That's so!'], and you know my
ideas pretty well--that they are honest at least, and that I have seen
the countries where freedom is 'on the job,' as they say. Now, don't put
your faith in men and in a party that cry, 'We will make all things new,'
to the tune of, 'We are a band of brothers.' Trust in one that says,
'You cannot undo the centuries. Take off the roof, remove a wall, let in
the air, throw out a wing, but leave the old foundations.' And that is
the real difference between the other party and mine; and these political
games of ours come to that chiefly."
Presently he called for the hands of the meeting. They were given for
Mr. Babbs.
Suddenly a man's strong, arid voice came from the crowd:
"'Allow me to speak, me noble lord!' [Great laughter. Then a pause.]
Where's my old chum, Jock Lawson?"
The audience stilled. Gaston's face went grave. He replied, in a firm,
clear voice.
"In Heaven, my man. You'll never see him more." There was silence for a
moment, a murmur, then a faint burst of applause. Presently John Cawley,
the landlord of "The Whisk o' Barley," made towards Gaston. Gaston
greeted him, and inquired after his wife. He was told that she was very
ill, and had sent her husband to beg Gaston to come. Gaston had dreaded
this hour, though he knew it would come one day. A woman on a death-bed
has a right to ask for and get the truth. He had forborne telling her of
her son; and she, whenever she had seen him, had contented herself with
asking general questions, dreading in her heart that Jock had died a
dreadful or shameful death, or else this gentleman would, voluntarily,
say more. But, herself on her way out of the world, as she feared,
wished the truth, whatever it might be.
Gaston told Cawley that he would drive over at once, and then asked who
it was had called out at him. A drunken, poaching fellow, he was told,
who in all the years since Jock had gone, had never passed the inn
without stopping to say: "Where's my old chum, Jock Lawson?" In the past
he and Jock had been in more than one scrape together. He had learned
from Mrs. Cawley that Gaston had known Jock in Canada.
When Cawley had gone, Gaston turned to the other gentlemen present.
"An original speech, upon my word, Belward," said Captain Maudsley.
Mr. Warren Gasgoyne came.
"You are expected to lunch or something to-morrow, Belward, you remember?
Devil of a speech that! But, if you will 'allow me to speak, me noble
lord,' you are the rankest Conservative of us all."
"Don't you know that the easiest constitutional step is from a republic
to an autocracy, and vice versa?"
"I don't know it, and I don't know how you do it."
"Do what?"
"Make them think as you do."
He waved his hand to the departing crowd.
"I don't. I try to think as they do. I am always in touch with the
primitive mind."
"You ought to do great things here, Belward," said the other seriously.
"You have the trick; and we need wisdom at Westminster."
"Don't be mistaken; I am only adaptable. There's frank confession."
At this point Mr. Babbs came up and said good-night in a large, self-
conscious way. Gaston hoped that his campaign would not be wasted, and
the fluffy gentleman retired. When he got out of earshot in the shadows,
he turned and shook his fist towards Gaston, saying: "Half-breed
upstart!" Then he refreshed his spirits by swearing at his coachman.
Gaston and Jacques drove quickly over to "The Whisk o' Barley." Gaston
was now intent to tell the whole truth. He wished that he had done it
before; but his motives had been good--it was not to save himself. Yet
he shrank. Presently he thought:
"What is the matter with me? Before I came here, if I had an idea I
stuck to it, and didn't have any nonsense when I knew I was right. I am
getting sensitive--the thing I find everywhere in this country: fear of
feeling or giving pain; as though the bad tooth out isn't better than the
bad tooth in. When I really get sentimental I'll fold my Arab tent--so
help me, ye seventy Gods of Yath!"
A little while after he was at Mrs. Cawley's bed, the landlord handing
him a glass of hot grog, Jock's mother eyeing him feverishly from the
quilt. Gaston quietly felt her wrist, counting the pulse-beats; then
told Cawley to wet a cloth and hand it to him. He put it gently on the
woman's head. The eyes of the woman followed him anxiously. He sat down
again, and in response to her questioning gaze, began the story of Jock's
life as he knew it.
Cawley stood leaning on the foot-board; the woman's face was cowled in
the quilt with hungry eyes; and Gaston's voice went on in a low monotone,
to the ticking of the great clock in the next room. Gaston watched her
face, and there came to him like an inspiration little things Jock did,
which would mean more to his mother than large adventures. Her lips
moved now and again, even a smile flickered. At last Gaston came to his
father's own death and the years that followed; then the events in
Labrador.
He approached this with unusual delicacy: it needed bravery to look into
the mother's eyes, and tell the story. He did not know how dramatically
he told it--how he etched it without a waste word. When he came to that
scene in the Fort, the three men sitting, targets for his bullets,--he
softened the details greatly. He did not tell it as he told it at the
Court, but the simpler, sparser language made it tragically clear. There
was no sound from the bed, none from the foot-board, but he heard a door
open and shut without, and footsteps somewhere near.
How he put the body in the tree, and prayed over it and left it there,
was all told; and then he paused. He turned a little sick as he saw the
white face before him. She drew herself up, her fingers caught away the
night-dress at her throat; she stared hard at him for a moment, and then,
with a wild, moaning voice, cried out:
"You killed my boy! You killed my boy! You killed my boy!"
Gaston was about to take her hand, when he heard a shuffle and a rush
behind him. He rose, turned swiftly, saw a bottle swinging, threw up his
hand . . . and fell backwards against the bed.
The woman caught his bleeding head to her breast and hugged it.
"My Jock, my poor boy!" she cried in delirium now. Cawley had thrown
his arms about the struggling, drunken assailant--Jock's poaching friend.
The mother now called out to the pinioned man, as she had done to Gaston:
"You have killed my boy!" She kissed Gaston's bloody face.
A messenger was soon on the way to Ridley Court, and in a little upper
room Jacques was caring for his master.